Tricia starts awake in a shadowed place of earthy scents, naked skin riddled with goose-flesh despite the warm wetness of subterranean air all around her.

Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch… echoing through cavernous dark, past sounds of liquid dripping on stone, coming closer.

Her eyes adjust to distant torchlight, held in sconces at least a hundred yards away, throwing long shadows against writhing cave walls.

Writhing?

Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch… it’s almost here, whatever it is. Tricia knows she needs to hide. But there is nowhere to run in this cell of hers.

A cell. She’s in a cell, rusted iron bars betraying their age. There are shackles on the wall behind her. Thank God she’s not chained up in them. But there is no bunk or closet, nowhere to hide except the shadows clinging to the corners. Instinctively, she huddles into one of them, arms wrapped around her shoulders, crouching low.

Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch… that’s no rat coming here, as Jason claimed. Rats don’t scuttle about on spindly bug-legs. And where is Jason? That S.O.B. did this to her.

She sees it now, sprouting out of the shadows just beyond her cage. A tiny creature, no bigger than a rabbit, but the most repulsive thing she’s ever seen; alien is the first word her rational mind can think of: a body like a lobster’s, but with broad, thin, membranous bat-wings, a mass of wriggling, pinkish tentacles where its head ought to be; and small enough to fit through the spaces between her cell’s bars.

It scuttles into her cell, tentacles writhing about, seeking purchase, inching ever closer to her. Until this moment, Tricia hadn’t realized how much she had started to rely on those bars to protect her, to be the barrier between her and the horrid reality of the caves beyond. Caves that are obviously swarming with these tiny monstrosities.

The thing leaps at her then, taking flight on fluttering bat-wings that buzz like a hornet’s. Tricia screams, slams back against the wall, arms raised to protect her face. But there is nowhere to run. When it lands on her, the tips of its articulated limbs dig into the first layer of her skin, cat-scratches, tentacles worming up past her arms and around her head, clammy snakes smothering her, engulfing all her senses in the awful trill, tickling their way into her nostrils, ears, mouth. She grabs it, straining muscles, muffled screams, desperate to pull it away, fighting for dwindling life. No use. Her breath fails her, like drowning. She collapses into a slump, tentacles digging deep.

Release her.

And then she is free, wheezing, the tiny alien thing hovering over near the bars to her cage. She collapses against stone walls, slowly coming back to life. Realizes that Jason’s voice was heard, but not spoken. Broadcast through the life-web.

She squints, trying to make out the new shape in the shadows. “Jason? Is that you?”

“That’s the name I’m using now.” He steps into the ambient light, beautiful as ever, but now unloveable.

“What the hell is going on, Jason? Why have you…”

“You wanted to see my night garden. And it wanted to see you.”

The grunt that comes out of her sounds like a question. She hugs herself, no one else from whom to seek comfort. The hovering lobster-thing drifts closer to her, lower this time, slower.

“We sensed you weeks ago, through the… what do you call it, in your mind? The life-web. Our mate and mother, the queen they’ve longed for these many years.”

“This is insane. Where am I, you bastard?”

“Caves beneath the house. I used to drag unruly serviles down here, to teach them a lesson. That was a long time ago.”

His voice has changed, accent more pronounced, less practiced. The word “serviles” sparks a memory in her.

“You mean slaves?”

“Yes. Showing them the garden was enough to keep them in line.”

The little alien, crab-legs clicking on stone, scampers out of the cell and over to Jason’s legs, tentacles caressing, gentle trilling, cat-like figure eights between them.

Tricia shakes her head, paces, like she always does when she’s nervous. Forgets she’s naked.

“You owned slaves?”

“Yes, Tricia. I was born in 1782. I’ve been the master of Creed House for over two hundred years.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Not with their help.” There are more of the little horrors scampering their way now, pouring out of the shadows on walls, ceiling, floor; a living, writhing carpet, wings fluttering in buzzing trills.

They start to fill her cell. Tricia freezes, wary, letting them surround her. What choice does she have?

“What are they, Jason?”

“Immortality. They’ve been here in these caves, mining ores, for longer than our species has walked the earth. But there must have been some kind of accident. When I found them, most were dead, and no adults. Only these sporelings. They grow like fungus, which is why I needed all that soil. But they walk and fly and think like animals. And I tamed them, as I tamed my serviles. Sheer force of mind.”

A cacophony of buzzes booms through the caves, filling Tricia’s head with visions of a dark and lonely world, porphyry in the void, a bruise on space-time’s flesh. Home.

She covers her ears. The noise is too much. She curls up on the floor. They move closer to her, tickling her skin with countless tentacle tips. Through the terrible chorus, Tricia realizes she is crying.

CREEEK! –- An iron hinge whines, and Jason’s beside her, cradling her in strong arms, whispering gently. Even now, his voice stirs something primal in her.

“People like us are rare, Tricia. Perhaps one born every few hundred years. Connected to the life-web. It’s how they talk to each other, and to those of us who can sense them.”

“Psychics?”

“Call it what you like.”

Help us, mother. Send us Home.

She realizes Jason didn’t hear that. Her tears settle. This message is only for her.

He eats us.

She pushes Jason away. “My God. How did you do it, Jason? How did you live so long?”

“I think you know. I’m a positively wicked chef.”

“Get away from me!” The hardest she’s ever shoved anyone. Jason stumbles backwards, little aliens scattering to avoid him. Tricia never knew she could be so strong.

But he’s on his feet again, rage in his eyes, tight fists straining muscles all the way up to his shoulders. “Get over yourself, Tricia. You have no choice here.”

She crawls backwards, trying to get to her feet, tripping over little lobster-things, tentacles still tickling, raising goose-flesh over every inch of her, as they seek embrace.

STOP IT, YOU LITTLE FUCKERS!

And they lurch backwards as one, some take flight, to a holding circle around her. Clicking and buzzing, assuring each other with entwined tentacles.

Jason steps back, too. Something has changed, confusing him. She can see fear in his ice-blue eyes, no longer the master. That only makes his rage worse.

“They called me here, Jason. Not you, just them.” She’s on her feet now, ready. “You’re still a pathetic slave-master after all these years. They’re done with you.”

“No. They gave themselves to me.”

“You took. They did not give. Dear God, Jason, you are eating children.”

He pounces, faster than thought, and she is choking, steel-trap hand squeezing the life from her throat. She claws, kicks, but he has centuries on her.

“So are you, ungrateful bitch. These are mi-go. They taste like mushrooms.”

Something snaps inside her. Suddenly, Jason is Jake, standing over her with liberty spikes and bloody fists, the blood not his; he is the slave-master of old, whipping helpless babies; master of the factory farm, ripping calves from screeching mothers.

Just as suddenly, the life-web fills her with all the world’s pain; she hears the cry of every abused spouse, every exploited animal and sweat-shop child (/cuz it makes me sick to think of every cage/and it makes me sick to think of life wasting away!). Something awakens deep within, even as her breath fades and eyes roll back, unconsciousness calling. All the years of abuse and denial harden into a ball behind her eyes and crumble to dust, leaving nothing behind but rage made flesh. Her mind screams, a buzzing trill joining the cacophony of alien voices rumbling in the life-web.

SHOW HIM PAIN!

And she can breathe again, gulping in gallons of air, deafened by Jason’s screams. The mi-go, alien swarm, are on him now, ripping flesh with crab-like pincers, buffeting with bat-wings, ripping with tentacles.

“No, Tricia! Please! We can live forever!”

She’s on her feet, smiling, predatory, catharsis for years of taking all the shit life threw at her and other suffering innocents.

He falls to his knees, blood spurting from immortal flesh, agony-tears welling in ice-blue eyes. “Tricia, I love you!” A murderer’s hand outstretched, beseeching, begging mercy. She can feel his mind, even now struggling to take command, thrashing the life-web nearly to breaking. But her rage and theirs command now.

She hears herself laugh, an evil thing locked long inside her, born at last. She steps forward to take his hand, and the mi-go stop their butchery, holding him tight in claws and tentacles.

His lip quivers, tearful ice-blues lock with her flaring emerald-greens. “Love? You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“Please, Tricia. Violence is not the answer.”

The mi-go squirm, thousands awakened from slumber forced on them for centuries. She can feel their hive-mind joining hers, long dark years of fear and pain and loneliness.

Give him to us.

Both her hands hold his now, a final caress. “That depends on the question, doesn’t it, my sweets?” She breaks contact, his hand falls limp at his side, defeated, then snatched behind his back by pincers and writhing clammy living ropes.

A part of her she doesn’t like savors the dwindling of hope in his eyes, hope she relishes extinguishing.

TAKE HIM HOME.

“No!” he screams. He heard that, too, as she wanted. The swarm is on him in full force, countless bat-wings buzzing vengeance.

“Please, Tricia! You don’t know what they do to our kind! Please, God, no!”

He is aloft in alien grasps. WHOOSH! –- a burst of air as the swarm speeds out of the caves, his screams drowned out by buzzing trills, dragging him off to the distant world Yuggoth, beyond Pluto’s orbit in the cold farthest reaches, where the sun is merely another pinprick of light.

Of course, he’ll probably freeze to death within seconds, but she hardly cares. For this one brief moment, the world’s pain is soothed, she is finally at peace.

#

Rita is waiting for her on the porch when she stumbles home, the Civic left for dead back at Creed House. Tricia can hear Gandhi going crazy, scratching, yowling, long before she gets to the porch.

“Jesus, Tricia, you look like shit.”

Tricia shrugs, ambles up the stairs, ignores Rita, anxious for licks and kisses from her most loyal friend. She comes into the house, barely holding back tears.

“Gandhi, good boy. Mommy’s home.”

But he cowers, growling, in the corner as she comes in.

“Gandhi, what’s wrong, baby?”

She reaches for him, and he snaps at her, teeth bared in fight or flight. Rita’s right behind her.

“I think he’s sick. He’s been going ape-shit for hours.”

Tricia reaches for him again. She needs him, now more than ever, loving lovely Gandhi, unconditional.

He has nothing for her but barks and yelps of fear and hate.

Her lip quivers, tears welling. “Gandhi, please.”

Suddenly, he pounces, going for her throat…

“Gandhi, no!”

…but she rolls with the attack, and he stumbles over her, bounds out the door, fleeing unseen predators. Before either she or Rita can react, Gandhi is gone, swallowed up by the night.

Tricia screams, all the world’s longings poured out through weary lungs, collapses into a weeping ball on the hardwood floor. Even with Rita here, she knows she is alone, forever.

Rita wraps herself around Tricia. “Shh, baby. We’ll get him back. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

“It’s not him,” whimpered through Tricia’s phlegmy sobs. “It’s what got into me.”

Through her blubbering, tickling the back of her mind, she hears a distant buzzing trill, swarm given sentience. And then Jason --

Please, Tricia! You don’t know what they do to our kind!

But now she does, sees the centuries of kidnap and cruel experiment inflicted on hapless innocents by the mi-go, and the knowledge shrivels her up into an empty husk on the cold hard floor of her shitty three-room house, in the arms of a simple woman who will never understand, and cannot be told, for her own safety. She falls into a soul-deep well of loss, and embraces the madness waiting there to engulf her.

Tricia has tasted alien flesh; she is a risk they cannot take. The world cannot know they are here.

Grateful they may be, but soon, very soon, they will come to take her Home.